the isolation in terror

Gettleman, regularly espousing the tragedies of the continent, gives us a run-down on the bush war:

For the rest, there are the un-wars, these ceaseless conflicts I spend my days cataloging as they grind on, mincing lives and spitting out bodies. Recently, I was in southern Sudan working on a piece about the Ugandan Army’s hunt for Kony, and I met a young woman named Flo. She had been a slave in the LRA for 15 years and had recently escaped. She had scarred shins and stony eyes, and often there were long pauses after my questions, when Flo would stare at the horizon. “I am just thinking of the road home,” she said. It was never clear to her why the LRA was fighting. To her, it seemed like they had been aimlessly tramping through the jungle, marching in circles.

No end in sight? This specific type of war is increasingly isolating. Abducted children find it impossible, or near impossible, to go “home” or to leave the bush. The Congo and Sudan are preferential to returning to a hostile Northern Uganda and to communities they raped and pillaged. In the face of no alternative, how can we slow or “end” this brutal cycle? Can child soldiers be offered incentives to return home in the form of food, money, protection? How can communities accommodate the return of former terrors so that they have an alternative to war? In Northern Uganda, the talk circled around transitional justice and the mato oput tradition. I look forward to exploring its role today, three years later and as Gulu becomes a vibrant economic center between Kampala and Juba.